Judith Davidoff
With congregation members watching, Deborah DeVane gets baptized by Zion City church Pastor Coliér McNair.
The Sunday before Labor Day was hot and muggy, drawing large crowds to Brittingham Park Beach. Most were there to kayak or kick back on lounge chairs, but one group strolled through in their Sunday best.
They walked just east of the main boat launch, by the basketball court and some picnickers, to another clearing along the shore. Deborah DeVane waded into the water along with Pastor Coliér McNair of Zion City International Church Ministries. More than a dozen members of the church lined up on the shore to watch the baptism, some raising their hands in praise of God. “Mother Mae” stood under the shade of a tree, holding a brightly colored umbrella. “Hold your nose, Deborah,” she shouted.
Deborah, 46, went to church that morning desperate to “be saved.”
“I felt like the devil and God was fighting and I could hear them,” she says a few days after the baptism. “I was being tugged to do bad things.”
Afterwards she had a sense of relief. “I felt like a burden was lifted up off of me.”
Baptisms are usually performed at Zion City’s church on Applegate Road, but this Sunday the pool was not ready. Mother Mae told Pastor Coliér how desperately Deborah wanted to be baptized. Someone suggested going to the lake.
The beginning of a baptism is more conversation than ritual, says Pastor Coliér. Deborah told him a bit of her story, and he counseled her on the import of what she was doing and made sure she wanted to proceed. “We want them to understand that it’s a big deal,” he says. “It’s not a one-time feel-good deal. It’s like standing at the altar.”
This time around, he tried to wrap things up quickly. “I normally would talk longer, but I thought something was nibbling on my leg. She said that too. It was a bit slippery as well.”
There was a prayer — “Upon the confession of your faith in the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I now in deed baptize in the name Jesus for the remission of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” — a dunk, and cheers. “We believe in full immersion,” says Pastor Coliér. “You take them under the water and bring them up. You are dying out of the old self and rising up a new person.”
Deborah grew up in the projects of Jersey City. “I had both of my parents,” she points out. They were poor but had everything they needed, she says. “I always say we had a ’hood-rich life.”
But it was a tough, rough life. When she had her own daughter she got an apartment in the same projects, but knew she wanted out. When her daughter got into her first fight at school, Deborah made a move, first to North Carolina and eventually, in 1998, to Madison, where she became a certified nursing assistant.
She credits Mother Mae for giving her a place to stay until she got on her feet. “She didn’t know us from Adam or Eve but she opened her home up.” Deborah returned to New Jersey for six years, but followed her daughter, who is now also a mother, back to Madison about a year ago.
Mother Mae continues to be her rock. “When I came back I still encountered a lot of obstacles, and once again she’s still here for me.”
Deborah says sticking close to Mother Mae, who introduced her to Zion City church, helps her stay away from her “old ways” of partying and hanging out with the wrong people. “When I’m around her I kind of live a different lifestyle.”
Deborah adores her job at Oakwood Village retirement center and says the residents adore her as well. “I love it so much, and they love me.” Yet she still struggles with internal demons. “How can they love me when I can’t love me completely?”
Year Coliér McNair became pastor of Zion City International Church Ministries, Inc.:
2006
Former name of church:
Vessels of Praise Apostolic Church Inc.
Year Vessels of Praise founded:
1996
Founders of Vessels of Praise:
Pastor Charles and Alberta McNair (Coliér’s parents) and David Hammonds and his late wife Betty Franklin-Hammonds
Baptisms performed by Zion City in 2014:
about 15
